1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing method and an information processing apparatus, having an SDL (specification and description language) execution unit described in SDL, an external environment description unit described in a programming language other than SDL, and an OS (operating system).
The SDL is based on CEFSM (communicating extended finite-state machine) of ITU-T Recommendations and is used to describe the specifications of information processing equipment such as exchanges. There are many programs described in other programming languages such as C and C++. There is a necessity of properly integrating programs described in SDL with programs described in other languages.
2. Description of the Related Art
SDL execution units contained in an SDL block are executed as tasks of an OS (operating system). If the number of the SDL execution units is large, the overhead of the OS increases because the OS must create tasks for the SDL execution units. An increase in the overhead of the OS causes a problem in a system such as a telephone exchange system that must secure real-time processing.
Communication between the SDL execution units and an external environment description unit and communication among the SDL execution units are controlled by communication controllers of the OS. If the numbers of signals handled by the communication controllers increase, the overhead of the OS also increases.
The external environment description unit must define signals such that the signals are easy to handle for the SDL execution units. The external environment description unit, therefore, is unable to form its own data group.
An object of the present invention is to integrate an external environment description unit with an SDL execution unit and assign a task of an OS to the integrated unit, to reduce the overhead of the OS.
In order to accomplish the object, a first aspect of the present invention provides an information processing method for use with an SDL execution unit described in SDL, an external environment description unit described in a programming language other than SDL, and an adapter. The adapter has a pseudo internal signal generator and a queue manager. The method includes the steps of connecting the external environment description unit and the SDL execution unit to each other through the adapter so that signals containing messages, events, and parameters may be exchanged between them through the adapter; assigning a task of an OS to the external environment description unit; and executing the task so that the pseudo internal signal generator may convert and transfer the signals between the external environment description unit and the SDL execution unit.
A second aspect of the present invention provides an information processing method for use with an SDL execution unit described in SDL, an external environment description unit described in a programming language other than SDL, and an adapter. The adapter has a pseudo internal signal generator and a queue manager. The method includes the steps of connecting the external environment description unit and the SDL execution unit to each other through the adapter so that signals containing messages, events, and parameters may be exchanged between them through the adapter; receiving information to be transferred to the SDL execution unit from the external environment description unit, the information being received as function parameters for the pseudo internal signal generator; converting the information by the pseudo internal signal generator into signals to be supplied to the SDL execution unit; transferring the converted signals to the queue manager; monitoring an internal queue of the queue manager; and activating, if the internal queue is holding the converted signals, the SDL execution unit by function call so that the activated SDL execution unit may fetch the converted signals from the internal queue and carry out processes accordingly.
A third aspect of the present invention provides an information processing apparatus for processing information under the control of a task assigned by an operation system. The apparatus has an adapter for connecting an SDL execution unit described in SDL and an external environment description unit described in a programming language other than SDL to each other so that signals may be transferred between them through the adapter under a task of the operation system assigned to the external environment description unit. The adapter has a pseudo internal signal generator and a queue manager. The pseudo internal signal generator separates, integrates, and converts signals to be transferred between the SDL execution unit and the external environment description unit. The queue manager has an internal queue for holding the signals to be transferred between the SDL execution unit and the external environment description unit.